What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Instead of publishing the name of the last book I wrote, I will tell you more about my first book in English this year, and this is the book Mine, Magic, and the White Beaker (this is the first part of my Trilogy Tales from the Upper Earth”).
I also have a whole odyssey about writing the book. I come from the town of Dobrich (there is in The Black Sea). As a child I sang in the Representative Children’s Choir of Dobrich. The choir was one of the four children’s formations that represented our country abroad in these days, we traveled outside the Iron Curtain even… We went with my friends every summer a month vacancy at the children’s camp “Ifkata”. The building of this camp was the fence of the Palace of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter – Maria – in Balchik (on the Black Sea). Then, for several years in a row, the Palace stood locked, closed, but mysterious and overgrown with greenery. I entered it secretly, just as Mina enters, through holes in the fence. I was walking and dreaming. The camp was not just a vacation! No… Every day we had rehearsals for singing, solfeggio, piano. It was a great school. This is the way that the school for gifted children “Seven Muses” appeared in my book.
Years later, my husband, Dr. Vasileios Flamburaris, and I were walking in the Palace and saw a large pink lizard. The lizard stood on a rock and the three of us looked at each other for a long time. Then the book itself appeared as if by magic…
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I have a solid and not so solid place to write … The solid is a very student desk-library at home. But also like to write on cafes, because the noise of people focuses me. Yes, I know both places are not exotic. My workplace, like a school, is not something strange, but simply something useful.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I have learned from many authors of literature for children and young people. I can give as an example some of them, such as: Homer, Euripides, Shakespeare, Gianni Rodari, Dora Gabe, Donald Bisset, Carl Sandberg, Valery Petrov, Ray Bradbury, John Tolkien, Nikolai Raynov, Svetoslav Minkov, Pamela Travers, Louis Carroll, Ran Bosilek, Angel Karaliychev, Clifford Simak, Beatrix Potter, Nikola Rusev, Joan Rowling, Philip Pullman, Tuve Janson, Astrid Lindgren, Boris Aprilov, Evgenios Trivizas, Rada Moskova and others.